San Saba Church of Christ
San Saba, San Saba County, Texas
Marker Inscription
San Saba County was organized in 1856, and in 1860 the commissioners court issued a block of land to each religious body; the Christian church was one of these. The congregation traded their land for another block upon which they built a small frame structure. The first documented preacher of the Christian church in San Saba was J. A. Henderson. For many years, services were conducted by lay elders and by traveling ministers. Popular religious debates held in San Saba often involved members of the Christian church. The 20th century was ushered in by the 1904 division in the Christian church, which led the San Saba congregation to choose the Church of Christ. Despite the split and such lean years as those of the Depression era, the San Saba Church of Christ thrived. Popular activities such as summer revivals increased membership in the church, with new facilities erected as needed. A controversy over the support of mission work resulted in the founding of a separate congregation in 1957, but the original San Saba congregation carried on and quickly regained its strength, flourishing in the 1970s. The San Saba Church of Christ upholds the unique traditions of its founders through worship, missionary, and community outreach programs in Texas and beyond. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When San Saba County was organized in 1856, the commissioners granted a block of land to each religious body, and the local Christian church traded for a site and raised a small frame building. Early worship depended on lay elders and traveling ministers, punctuated by the lively public religious debates popular in frontier San Saba. The national 1904 division within the Christian church led this congregation to become a Church of Christ, and it weathered the Depression, a 1957 split, and lean years to flourish again in the 1970s.
Why it matters
Its history traces how frontier Texas towns organized religious life from scratch and how a single congregation lived through the broader denominational divisions of American Protestantism.
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Related people
- · J. A. Henderson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Estep-Burleson Building
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Elijah Estep, San Saba County's second tax assessor-collector, built this two-story building of locally quarried limestone facing the courthouse in the early 1870s, running a mercantile store nearby. Long mislabeled the "Burden Hotel," records show it was Estep's own construction on a lot he bought in 1871. It later served as attorney Leigh Burleson's law office and passed through other hands, narrowly escaping demolition in the 1990s before being donated and restored to its 1911 appearance.
The Texas Rangers and the San Saba Mob
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Isolated from courts and railroads, San Saba County in the mid-1800s spawned vigilante "mobs" that first promised protection and then curdled into a secret terror society. By the 1880s the shadowy San Saba Mob — organized like a fraternal lodge, complete with secret signs and midnight meetings at places like Buzzards' Water Hole — was ambushing settlers, leaving victims marked by nine bullet holes. In 1896 the state sent in the Texas Rangers under Sgt. W. J. L. Sullivan and later Capt. Bill McDonald, who paired with District Attorney W. C. Linden to move trials out of the county and finally break the Mob's grip by 1900.
San Saba County Courthouse
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San Saba County was created by the Texas Legislature in 1856, and a frame courthouse and later a stone one served its people on this site through the nineteenth century. In 1910, with the city newly incorporated and a railroad connection on the way, residents authorized a grand replacement. Alabama architect Walter Chamberlain designed this Classical Revival building of pressed brick and rusticated sandstone, finished just as the first train arrived in August 1911.
San Saba Cemetery
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Originally the Odd Fellows Cemetery, this burial ground began in 1883 when the local IOOF lodge bought ten acres north of old San Saba and maintained it for forty-five years. In 1929 the newly incorporated San Saba Cemetery Association purchased the grounds and additional acreage for token sums, and in 1935 burials from the town's earliest city cemetery were reinterred here. The cemetery stands as a continuing record of San Saba's earliest citizens and its changing community.